Customer Reviews

Remember Me: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Memory, suffering and loss are the themes of this rather abstract and densely imagined book by Trezza Azzopardi. I can't say this is one of my favourite books of the year - the story takes a little too long to develop and Azzopardi's method of switching backwards and forwards in time becomes, at times, a little blurred. But the story is still a quite elegant and engaging study of one woman's anguish and torment and of the puzzle of a life at last reclaimed. Narrated in the first person by the seventy-two-year old Winifred - homeless and abused time after time by those she's trusted - she is content to sit on park benches watching the world go by, or read the "free sheets" for furniture she can't afford to buy. She would rather not recall the past, but after a young girl robs her of her suitcase and wig - her only material possessions - she is propelled out of her exile, and forced on a journey to find the thief.

Remember Me is a cerebral venture, a journey of the mind and memory. Winifred must confront her stolen life and her time living as a young girl against the backdrop of the Second World War. In fragments and illusions, she is gradually forced to take stock of how abuse, long obscured have bought her to a dilapidated house on the edge of nowhere. She recalls the upheaval caused by her mentally ill Mother, and her disaffected father; and the betrayal by her strict and domineering grandfather, her embittered, sallow Aunt Ena and the kindness offered by the lodger, Mr. Stadnik. She also recalls Joseph Dodd, her lost and only love, a young man who she meets in the country. As Winifred pieces together her life, she realizes that she is not only searching for a thief, but she is searching for a life that was lived, and at once, irretrievably lost.

Remember Me requires a close reading as Azzopardi peppers the narrative with many subtle and understated clues to Winifred's life. The story unfolds slowly and mellifluously as Winifred's identity and her "mistakes" are gradually revealed. Like her Mother, Winifred feels an affinity with the spirit world and is trained to see ghosts -she sees herself in reflection, "the girl looking back at me from underneath, like a premonition of what was to come" Winifred sees "future ghosts", memories stored on top of one another; she's building a "tower without bells" and later, she will bring them down in an earthquake of her own making. Full of poetic imagery, Remember Me draws a sharp contrast with the dreamlike quality of Winifred's youth and her ambling, wondering and solitary present life. Azzopardi uses short, sharp, yet incredibly descriptive sentences to create a world of reverie and emotion. This is a complex and opaque novel, full of feeling and passion.

Michael

Trezza Azzopardi burst upon the literary scene with a hauntingly beautiful novel, "The Hiding," which was a Booker finalist. Her initial work was a heads up that here was a new writer of note. She undergirds our original assumption with "Remember Me," an equally compelling story related in lovely measured cadence through the voice of Winnie who narrates her life in flashback form.

Corrie James presents a splendid reading, capturing perfectly the voice of an elderly homeless woman who is lost in the world. Winnie has precious few material possessions and suffers trauma when they are stolen from her. She begins a search for the thief and as she does so recounts a past of pain and disillusionment.

Born to a mentally deficient mother and uncaring father the girl is left with a grandfather and later foisted off on an aunt. There comes a time when she is a teenager when all she knows of relatives in this world are gone. Thus begins a downward spiral during which she becomes a pawn, used to satisfy the greed and lust of others.

The tale sounds depressing yet it is anything but as it is uplifted by Azzopardi's elegant prose and Winnie's gumption.

- Gail Cooke

Welsh-born Trezza Azzopardi has followed up her remarkable debut novel ("Hiding Place") with one that shows maturity and skill in addition to a gentle empathy with her characters. The narrative is related by an old woman who is what was once called "simple-minded." Passed around as a child amongst adults who alternately love, use, tolerate and scorn her, she struggles to make sense of events in terms she can understand. Painfully aware of her "differentness", she learns to ride the hard times patiently and fight back only when pushed beyond endurance.

Azzopardi has cleverly allowed the thoughts of her protagonist, as expressed in the story, to be articulate and perceptive, although the character struggles to express herself out loud to others. The result is a sustained level of tension with poetic imagery that never becomes overwrought or maudlin.

By the end of "Remember Me", Winnie has made her peace with the world, and neither wants nor needs our sympathy. Nevertheless, we should be ashamed that she was based on a real life "resident of the streets", one of those forced to squat in abandoned buildings in the middle of so much affluence.

Of the half dozen or more books I read per month, the vast majority are forgotten before I'm through chapter 1 of the next. This is one of those rare gems that stay in your mind and heart long after the last chapter.

In this emotional (surprisingly NOT depressing) book, Azzopardi weaves a story out of fragments of memory, waiting until the end to show the subtle, yet startling, tapestry. It is an artfully impressionistic image of a life--unprotected, unsheltered, unfulfilled. In the end, the picture is clear, the author provides all the information we really need to know.

Other reviewers have given an idea of the story. But the telling of it, more that the plot itself, makes this the best book I've read in a long, long time.

Azzopardi's new book outclasses the excellent 'the hiding place' in every way. The end of this book goes through you like a wrecking ball.

Compare it to Trevor's 'the life of Lucy Galt' and Coetzee's 'Age of Iron'.

Azzopardi in a new voice in modern literature, one which speaks lowly but with terrible power.

The author is compassionate, loving in her treatment of our indigent neighbors. It seems vital to our humanity that we give pause to the truth that each stranger might have lost and be lost, displaced from another time, and even another life. I am impressed with the beautifully written passages, how spare and full of life in every measure. I couldn't put the book down as it reached its unpredictable end. Don't miss her first novel, The Hiding Place - it is breathtaking.

Azzopardi's technique of going back and forth between present and various times in the past is a little difficult to get used to. She did it in her first novel, "The Hiding Place," as well. But once you get so far into her story, you see that the way she has organized it is a careful reconstruction of how memory chases us, how so much remains buried, and when it does surface, it comes in fits and fleets, in a dream-like dance. This is the process of becoming conscious that the great psychiatrist, Carl Jung, pioneered.

Patricia/Lillian/Winnie isn't just a sad old homeless woman Azzopardi means for us to pity and think, "There but for the grace of God go I." Winnie is those among us--and we are legion, as the demons said to Christ--who have let objects usurp the place in our lives that real feeling, actual people, and the truth of events should hold. Looking at Winnie this way, we see that her actual poverty is our poverty of soul, regardless of economic status, which we hide from ourselves by acquiring things as some sort of cushion against facing up to our alienation and despair. When we save "artefacts" from our past and the pasts of those close to us, it is to remember only what was not painful and to color falsely what was reality. But finding meaning in life involves shedding the things AND the illusions and taking on the despair. Hope is on its other side.

Azzopardi is a fascinating master of character and words, and her work so far is some of the best I've read ever. She truly captures the nature of the human problem at the beginning of the 21st century and points us in the direction of its solution.

What a strange and beautifully written novel. It's written in reverse timeline, as the protagonist (called at different times, Lillian, Patsy, Beautiful, Princess and Winnie), a more-than-a-little loony bag lady, attempts to recreate her own life while at the same time trying to forget some of the more painful parts.

The reader is left to figure out what is truth, what is a figment of Winnie's imagination, what is a result of her mental illness, and what is just pure creation on her part in order to keep herself from feeling pain too deeply.

The storyline brought to mind the movie "Memento" where the main character suffered from short-term memory loss and had to tattoo reminders onto his body. Like "Memento," "Remember Me" plays with the idea of truth and memory, and the secrets we tell to -- and keep from -- even ourselves.

I must say, this is one of the strangest books I have ever listened to. I still am not sure what is is about, where it is set, or what the plot is. But you keep listening to it just to see what happens next, just thinking that soon you will figure it out. All I know is that it is about a crazy lady, and her upbringing. You feel sorry for her, and begin to understand how she got that way, but it jumps around so much that you never know for sure what is real and what is not. In the begining you think that it is going to change and soon it will start to make sence, but it never really does until the end.

I am thrilled that the author chose this disjointed narrative for her main character; how else would the voice of a woman living rough in the streets, her mind jumbled from years of abuse and willful neglect, sound?

The back and forth movement of time as the plot moves steadily forward, is a little like what an addled brain might do to chronological time, if pressed for explanation.

The dialogue is real and the characters fully realized.

Strange and mesmerizing, this book is amazing.